(for those unfamiliar: Framework makes a modular upgradable open laptop design, their laptops have expansion bays that accept these cards which all use standard USB-C ports as their basis, so their USB-A expansion card can technically be used as a C-A adapter on other computers)
Oh God, I'm LOVING Scott Pilgrim: Takes Off!
It Is NOT What You Expect It Is!
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@:labrys-xf-p: HighPriestessTerra :labrys-xf-b: :xf_lesknife: maybe? I hadn't heard anything and the EU's pressure usually comes from other fronts.
I suspect it might be success on Google's counter-ploy add all the same features, and have it automatically translate iMessage's "such-and-such liked your message" to proper reactions... so iMessage users got stuck purely being the less featured bunch
I'm as much eat the rich as the next girl, but I do get tired people applying it casually to entertainers or artists...
It's not a score thing, it's not hit this number in net worth and suddenly you're on the dinner plat. It's based on the fact specifically on the abuses it takes to get there, entertainers being one of the few exceptions on multiple fronts.
Here's the thing about entertainers:
* they're typically not the ones responsible for paying the workers, outside of a small few, actors don't pay the film crew (they're paid by the same people as the crew), and singers/musicians don't pay the majority of the crew (they're paid for by the venue, those they do pay for are probably going to be better compensated for their expertise). The stories of actors donating parts of their salary to crew... that's legit charity as it's not their responsibilities (that responsibility falls on the producers and studio execs).
* they have wildly inflated net worth, because net worth of a performer is typically about how much money they can make, but not necessarily how much money they get.
* they have inconsistent pay
* often those numbers hide other expenses, if they have their own staff or equipment or resources or such... those costs come after the number you're being quoted typically (ie. a musician makes $500 mil on the tour? Their personal crew, tour bus, etc are all paid out from that). This is because a performer is an instance of them being their own business which means they have astronomical expenses under their name.
Of course this doesn't mean they can't be awful, it's not uncommon for them to start their own side businesses (considered a good plan because their stardom likely won't last forever), and it's in those businesses where they often become "The Rich".
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@Charlie Stross it's entirely guesswork I agree, but I do think it's also a combination of people not knowing what net worth even is...
Like for you they'd be talking thinks like your "fair market value" if you were to sell off all rights to the laundry files.
Net worth includes a lot of ridiculous number... for the typical person it includes the estimated amounts they can get if they were to sell their car, their home, every single possession of any remote worth to them...
The "net" part of it is what the number is minus debts.
The guesswork of course is just them guessing what you could theoretically sell your whole life for and a guess of how much you owe in debts.
A lot of people think it means income or how much money someone has on hand.
Dear god can we stop with the false "this saying is actually longer", it's terrifying seeing constant historical revisionism even if it's something so minor...
We don't need to edit history to erase all the inconveniences of taking a quippy saying at face value, and this only encourages people to be awful around so very many very real social issues because the quippy line can be purposefully misread in some shitty way that's obviously incorrect... by pulling this constantly it just tells people they're in the right for their bad faith takes.
Hey, it's that time of year again where I remind you that "Happy Holidays" is *** NOT INCLUSIVE ***.
There is no special feature of this time of year that makes "happy holidays" inclusive. It's popular to cite how many holidays occur in winter/fall... but you find just as many in every season.
Happy holidays is purely a stand-in for Merry Christmas, and the whole effort of it is using a nod to minority religions (most commonly my faith) to throw Christmas in our faces while pretending to include us.
Channukah is our least important holiday, acknowledging it when you don't even know our other holidays, let alone what our most sacred holidays are... well, that tells you the whole story itself.
Let alone people don't know when it actually is and will most years be "celebrating" it weeks after it's over.
Holidays don't have to be lumped together, celebrate your holiday. Nobody is offended at you celebrating your holiday, only at it being forced on us.
And "Happy Holidays" only exists as a way to force it on us while pretending to include us.
Random recommendation post:
Kagi: https://kagi.com
"Premium" Search Engine, free tier to try it out and a small monthly fee to use it regularly. Absolutely better results than Google, no ads, and more privacy. I really do recommend it. (And for my family there is a family plan as well...)
Beeper: https://beeper.com
A universal chat platform, if you long for the old days of Trillian, GAIM/Pidgin, and the like. Days when you could use your own chat program and just talk to everyone across everything... well this is it again. It's a Matrix service (think open source equivalent to Messenger/Skype/Discord/etc) and bridges to all the other services. Currently it's free, but it's planned to be free + paid extra features.
This has made a world of difference in my experience talking and chatting with people, especially the short list of people who talk primarily on Discord rather than SMS or Messenger. Plus if you're on Beeper or another Matrix service, end-to-end encryption is the default for complete security (You can even use your own client if you like without losing that)
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This is two years old but could easily be mistaken for current news.
Also a great summary of the whole situation and still entirely relevant.
https://youtu.be/INCXqWzH5vk?si=8fUbaEpG5AhcTrku
#israel #israel-gaza #Israel-GazaWar #Palestine #palestine-israelConflict
Uncomplicating The "Complicated" Palestine/Israel Conflict - SOME MORE NEWS
For 20% off your first order, visit http://MackWeldon.com/somenews AND ENTER PROMO CODE: somenewsHi. Is The Palestine/Israel Conflict Actually Complicated? P...YouTube
Ooof, just watched the new episode of Dimension 20.
Dropout is genuinely super fantastic about content warnings on their content... but they fell a little short on this one, mostly because they did something new and extreme... and didn't realize that they needed stronger warnings.
And of course in the FB group there are a whole bunch of people going "It's not their fault you didn't read the content warnings" like douches.
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It's really wild coming into Baldur's Gate 3 after playing Solasta.
If you're not aware: Solasta is an unlicensed D&D 5e game that uses SRD content plus some of their own content to flesh it out some.
Interestingly enough, I'd absolutely say that Solasta is waaaaaay more faithful to D&D than BG3 is. And it's battle system is much better done, both between being more faithful and supporting things like proper flight and spider climb (as opposed to BG3 which doesn't have spider climb and implements flight as just a fancy long range jump basically).
It does a much better job of short rests vs long rests, let alone fast travel. Solasta doesn't have you warping back to camp mid dungeon, but instead you have to find a safe spot to camp in the dungeon if you want a long rest. And fast travel is done by accelerated movement rather than warping, so you can't use it to magically escape a dungeon.
That's not to say Solasta is outright better.
BG3 shines on drastically better story and voice acting, as well as making your dialogue choices really feel meaningful. I was never able to bond with my own characters really in Solasta like I can in BG3.
Oh, and BG3 feels like a complete package since so many races and classes in Solasta are behind DLC.
If someone told me they wanted to play BG3 specifically for the 5e combat and mechanics, I'd definitely point them to Solasta over BG.
#DungeonsAndDragons5e #DungeonsAndDragons #BaldursGate3 #BG3
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Content warning: Injury, but it's only a cop and no visible injury; laughing at someone's pain and misfortune, but again it's a cop
Content warning: Injury, but it's only a cop and no visible injury; laughing at someone's pain and misfortune, but again it's a cop
Content warning: Injury, but it's only a cop and no visible injury; laughing at someone's pain and misfortune, but again it's a cop
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Gotta admit... I'm sold on Kagi.
The experience and quality has been fantastic using their free tier (100 free searches a month), enough that I decided to pay for it to keep using it.
Gist: it's a search engine that chose to rely on subscriptions instead of ads and data mining... and it shows in the quality of the search results. There isn't a whole page of them linking to other partner or owned services before you get any results. On top of that there's a crapload of customization and control of your experience (such as choosing what things it tries to automatically answer).
As mentioned, there's a free tier of 100 searches a month, that's actually good for most people to use for a week or two. No sensitive data needed, so I recommend giving it a try.
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30 Days of US Healthcare: DIR Fees
https://youtube.com/watch?v=I61wCVh0Y1E&si=FvaY0Ci3XrHOsB0p
Day 23 of 30 Days of US Healthcare https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpMVXO0TkGpdvjujyXuvMBNy6ZgkiNb4W
Saw this and decided to share my commentary on it because it's extremely harmful:
Unfortunately nothing here is valid. They've solved the finger problem and it's pretty much only old models that show up there. People are bad at even as well (let alone the fact that real faces are asymmetrical). Purposeless or lack of intent is also common in human art (there are whole art styles around it). And lack of perspective often is because the real art it's emulating lacks perspective.
And those AI detection pages are very very inaccurate. They can't remotely tell you if it's actual AI work, just if they think there's a chance of it being AI work.
All of this, including the detection sites are causing problems for real people who get accused of their very real artwork being AI. People get shut out of communities and told that they need to entirely change their personal style if they want to be accepted because it's too "AI like".
And finally the comment about it taking an incredible amount of resources: it actually takes remarkably little. You can run these AI systems on a single desktop computer with a low to mid range graphics card. (One of the problems for these AI companies and one of the reasons they're so widespread is because it's so easy and cheap to run it yourself)
Note: I don't have the energy for an image description, if you reply with one I'll edit this post to include it.
Just a reminder:
Mastodon != ActivityPub != Fediverse
It's been driving me up the wall how often people act like Mastodon is a synonym for both AP and Fedi.
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Just giving a shout out to Fediseer.com for an interesting project (and the gui project available at https://fediseer.lemmings.world
If you're an instance admin I think it's worth checking out, setting up, and bookmarking for your moderation toolkit.
I don't endorse any sort of automated blocking off of said lists, but I do endorse having a database you can reference when deciding whether to defederate an instance, especially if people have filled in proof links.
Having a really low day... I could barely sleep last night, struggling with insomnia, ADHD, and pain.
Pain especially... it's finally starting to cool off a little and my chronic joint pain is through the roof, and I just got off a week of being sick with a cold.
I'm really depressed right now and feeling trapped. My car has been out of commission since February and my joint pain makes it hurt so much to walk places (and taking the bus still involves a significant amount of walking/standing)... so I've hardly left the house all year.
I hardly see anybody and I'm really lonely, if I didn't have my sibling living with me I don't know how I'd survive.
Please send some kind words to fight off the intrusive thoughts.
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ugh no car is the wooorst feeling. I feel you I have the ADHD and the insomnia it comes with and it's no joke.
Sending big old hugs and I hope the weather gives you a break soon.
I've been staving off the season change doldrums I can feel coming by buying a bunch of lava lamps, but I can't recommend my methods they are always ill-advised. 
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I'm pretty sure even AI supporters can agree we really need to institute some sort of laws around mandatory labeling of AI generated content.
#ai
Dear lord... I feel the need to sit people down and do a Copyright 101 class...
I just saw someone call Creative Commons a "type" of copyright...
Only half joking, if people would actually listen I'd do it in a heartbeat.
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- I will not mock people for not knowing any better, we don't teach this well and there are so many myths circling
New landing page text on my server, would love some feedback (this is the text shown at https://foggyminds.com when not logged in):
Welcome To Foggyminds!We have open registration!
We are a leftist instance aiming to just be a nice space to occupy on the fediverse. We welcome temporary exploratory accounts and small businesses.
We try to listen to minority voices. The admin is Disabled Jewish LGBTQIA, but tries to recognize that they still have white privilege. Please report any instances of bigotry, hate, or trolling, even if subtle, to our admin at shiri (at) foggyminds (dot) com. Especially if perpetrated by our admin.
You can view our public feed here and our blocklist as well as enabled addons are provided here. While we do not permit subtle bigotry on our instance we do not block other servers aggressively for it. We are more inclined to block problem accounts specifically unless it is endemic to the instance as we understand most users on that instance are likely blind to this. If this is unacceptable, we're more than happy to be a temporary place to help you find a safer instance.
Nazi's didn't just kill the Jews, we were just the biggest target. The other targets continued to get persecuted afterwards (LGBTQ people in concentration camps were taken straight to prisons after the war!)
But by god I will use Jewish-Privilege on the topic to break down misuse of Nazi threats (ie. misapplying the Nazi/Table quote).
Reminded deeply today of the subtle insidious racism of leftists and liberals.
So many in our communities are prone to believe that they've gotten rid of their racism, and instead fuel it by demanding ideological purity and by ignoring inconvenient truths.
When a minority group says something you're doing is racist, take a minute to stop and ask yourself what you might not be seeing. And if you really can't find anything, ask for more information (but try to figure it out for yourself first, it's both polite and good exercise).
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The case in question here was people calling out anyone still using Twitter as a Nazi.
Take it from this Jew: Twitter is not the same thing as the table quote. It's a massive international platform with shitloads of social inertia. There are many many people who can't leave the platform without personal harm.
And many who did try to leave and come here? They got drove out by demands that they conform to the ideologies and culture here, subtle racism in the form of demanding that they abandon their cultural norms otherwise they'll be harassed until they leave.
So don't condemn someone for just using and being present on Twitter.
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@Runyan50 it sounds like you're saying this tongue and cheek, but it's pretty much nail on the head. Most of them that I've seen are pissed that we've taken this long to notice (Twitter has always been pretty bad).
As I understand it, it's a lot of community organizing efforts kind of stuff. And that sounds small, but we're talking things ranging from abortion care to political revolutions.
And these all need the people to work. Over here we have a lot of people who are opposed to platform growth and are hell bent on their cultural view of this space, so when they try to move those efforts here... they're too often met with intense hostility.
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@Runyan50 I unfortunately can only say in vague terms because I'm not a member of any of those communities.
I can say social inertia is a thing, it's the reason I'm still on facebook for instance. I would have never joined in the first place if it weren't for the social weight of the platform, and I hate it every single day for it.
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@Friendica Admins I'm curious for feedback about other admin's setups. I know the default choice is apache, but how many are like me running nginx + php-fpm?
I'm curious what tips and tricks people have figured out? Has anyone settled on a good stable caching config? (Last time I set up caching I tried to limit it to just static files and images, but it somehow cached some of the regular pages it seems wondering if maybe one of those css or javascript files is actually dynamic?)
As it stands my setup is two nginx webservers behind an nginx load balancer, both running php-fpm, a shared nfs media storage directory, memcached on the database server for php sessions.
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@Shiri Bailem I'm another single-user instance, but it's pretty responsive and snappy with Nginx/FPM. To be honest, I haven't configured PHP on Apache in quite some time, and I expect it would be net slower just because of how Apache functions.
It was much slower before I dealt with the activitypub-troll.cf issue (they were murdering my db), it runs quite well for my needs. Might do caching and/or db replication, more as a best practice than because I think anyone will ever sign up on my instance...
I've got a cron running a version of something @Hank G ☑️ suggested in an older thread, and a few instance blocks, that also improved response times by a noticeable margin.
I'm living dangerously on develop, though I haven't pulled in a few days since it's performing much better now.
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Been seeing the "Nazi Bar" analogy in regards to Twitter lately.
To recap: it's the suggestion that people remaining on Twitter are fascists or tolerating fascism for remaining much like those who visit a Nazi bar.
This is a privileged take and not a clean analogy. The bar is a non-vital space with plenty of competition, you don't have to drink, you don't have to go to that bar.
Twitter may not be as huge as Facebook and a little easier to move away from, but no place has really solidified itself as the place to go instead (despite what many think about Mastodon/Activity-Pub), and the communities still take time and effort to move.
On top of that, these places (yes FB included) have always been fascist leaning. It's just you finally hearing all the dog-whistles. So many of these communities were hearing the dog-whistles from the start but didn't have anywhere else to go, so they had to fight to establish themselves in what spaces they had.
Don't judge them for having difficulty moving and re-establishing in a new space when every space is a huge effort to claim. The fediverse isn't immune to racism and fascism, there's absolutely whole new fights to be had here against bigotry, especially the privileged neo-liberal sort.
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@odd_megan that's not doable for everyone, and also in regards to other spaces it's mostly transitional.
This wave is still pretty new as far as broad culture goes, many are waiting and looking to see where the space will be. They're not necessarily idling, they're building those spaces elsewhere but because you can be in two places at once online, they're still over in the Twitter spaces because it's still "the space" and they need to be there to get the necessary support and also to see where people go when they leave it.
It's crucially important to not judge marginalized groups based on the standards and experiences of unmarginalized (or differently marginalized) identities.
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@odd_megan Pikuach Nefesh is the one law of Judaism with no exceptions, it is in fact the number one exception to all other laws.
"Life is the highest commandment" - All Jewish law cedes to the health and wellbeing of people.
If leaving Twitter would cause someone harm, then they are permitted to stay on Twitter but this does not relieve them of seeking alternatives to eventually reach a point where they can leave Twitter with little to no harm.
also, Im sure the jewish community, out of all communities, has spent a lot of time thinking about fash, ones ethical obligations regarding protecting ones self and others from them, but im not familiar with it.
after thinking about it. i think this is a conversation i should back out of. I dont have sufficient knowlage expertice. its a tough question, and others have spent a lot more time on the issue than i have. sorry
@odd_megan It's okay, I get where you're coming from and it can be good to voice these discussions as it creates a space of learning, especially when you're willing to learn.
To clarify on Pikuach Nefesh what details are a little less obvious on a quick read:
* specific identifiable life is counter to arguments that some vague uncertain person might be harmed. Ie. it doesn't rule that you have to child proof a house that never expects to have children in it. It also doesn't cover vague potential life ("But if you do this you'd become infertile or could pass on genetic abnormalities to your future children!")
* life threatening isn't generally considered as "will cause death" but rather is interpreted typically as "lasting harm". For instance, losing a leg won't necessarily kill me... but if I would lose a leg following a commandment then Pikuach Nefesh kicks in. If giving food/money/shelter to those in need would risk my health and well being, then I can say no, but if it wouldn't then I must say yes.
In the topic of things like support networks in fascist spaces: if it would just be unpleasant to leave, then you're required to leave. But if it would cause you lasting harm to leave, then you are permitted to stay.
Also of note: Judaism still praises martyrs, we just discourage it. It's a great good (notably not a Mitzvah) to die to uphold justice and your faith... the real Mitzvah is surviving another day.
Quoted from a facebook post by user Elraen:
I’ve threatened this digital essay for some time, and now I feel like my timeline could use some nerdom, so the moment has come: it’s time for my full defense of Frodo. 😉
I remember when I was younger, I struggled to accept and understand why a lot of my peers found Frodo either forgettable or material for mocking. I understand it a little better now: the movies DO often make him not particularly likable or watchable. The book portrays him as someone who doesn’t seem to be experiencing a reasonable range of human expression/emotion, which admittedly can make him less compelling to read about. I understand that. But I also think it’s integral to the point of the character.
Frodo and Sam are necessary for understanding each other. Sam was a character cast from the mold that Tolkien learned on the frontlines of World War I. Tolkien saw Sam as the everyday hero, the embodiment of the simple good-hearted courage of the men he watched die in the trenches. Sam’s obstacles are exterior to himself: the geography. The threat of enemy soldiers (orcs), of Shelob, of his companion's physical and mental difficulties.
By contrast, Frodo’s obstacles are primarily internal. He endured a lot of those same exterior challenges as Sam, but Sam did much to absorb their impact (see the Cirith Ungol rescue). Frodo’s challenges are the slow, steady erosion of a soul being asked to carry a tremendous internal darkness without being consumed by it. Everything he was became laser-focused on that monolithic spiritual and emotional task.
This is why, at the end, Frodo had to sacrifice far more than Sam. Because Sam’s primary struggle was against external forces, once those external forces were alleviated, he could go home, marry, have children, live as a functional member of his community. For Frodo, the cessation of exterior pressure could do nothing to mend the way his soul had been burning from the inside out.
This is a hard thing to portray in movie form (the greatest weakness of the LotR movies is their inability to portray subtlety and spirituality, two traits the narrative Tolkien crafted requires). We see Frodo’s neck chapping from the actual physical weight of the Ring as a representation; well and good. But it’s hard to truly convey the immense mental weight, the crucible of enduring without utter collapse.
If Sam is a kind of patron saint for the good-hearted soldier, I would posit that Frodo is the patron saint of the depressed, the suicidal, the addicted, the ones living with trauma. We see it best maybe at Mount Doom, where Frodo’s very self has been ground down to nearly nothing: “No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.”
If you’d ever been deeply depressed, ever lived chained in the prison of PTSD, you will have experienced that exact same thing.
And of course that’s not always the most likable thing to read about or to watch. Mental anguish has a way of stripping away so many of the human details about you, even your personality itself.
"Frodo is a study of a hobbit broken by a burden of fear and horror— broken down, and in the end made into something quite different,” J.R.R. Tolkien himself wrote.
In another letter (#246, for the curious), Tolkien addressed the concern that had been posed to him that Frodo was a weak and failed hero, that his decision at Mount Doom proved it. “I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure,” Tolkien clarified. “At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum– impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted… I do not myself see that the breaking of his mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been– say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.”
Tolkien built into Frodo a validation of the internal struggle, marking it not as weakness, but ultimately even as a special kind of strength. Through the character of Frodo, Tolkien displayed that internal anguish, fear, and pain were not moral failings. He might not have known it, but Tolkien was building an incredibly beautiful fictitious case study on the impact of trauma on the soul and the human ability to endure.
“Frodo undertook his quest out of love– to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could; and also in complete humility, acknowledging that he was wholly inadequate to the task,” Tolkien summarized. “His real contract was only to do what he could, to try to find a way, and to go as far on the road as his strength of mind and body allowed. He did that.”
And for any of us carrying a weight of horror, trauma, grief, dread, anxiety, depression, despair— maybe our hope is the same. To do what we can. To know that, even when our minds give out under the tremendous weight, we are still enough.
Mary Nikkel - I’ve threatened this digital essay for some...
I’ve threatened this digital essay for some time, and now I feel like my timeline could use some nerdom, so the moment has come: it’s time for my full...www.facebook.com
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •Content warning: Episode 1 Spoiler
Everything is pretty much the same through episode 1 until the very last moment at which point everything goes completely off the rails into an entirely new story!
SO MUCH META!
SO MUCH WHOLESOME!
TRAUMA RECOVERY HAPPENS!
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •ראַף 🟣
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to ראַף 🟣 • •@raf 🟣 I'd give it a yes, I think it's a great addition and I honestly only recommend it in context of watching the movie or reading the comic first.
Did you know they got everyone to come back and voice act their characters in this?
ראַף 🟣
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to ראַף 🟣 • •@raf 🟣 My jaw hit the floor and never quite got off it the whole rest of the way.
I was half watching it while playing games, expecting a straight retelling with minor changes and more content... I was so confused at the end of episode 1!
ראַף 🟣
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •My initial expectation is it's going to be like the Matrix 4 movie with lots of callbacks but done so much better
But no spoilers! I'm checking this out!
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